Renaissance Revivals

City Comedy and Revenge Tragedy in the London Theater, 1576-1980

Renaissance Revivals examines patterns in the London revivals of two English Renaissance theatre genres over the past four centuries. Griswold's focus on revenge tragedies and city comedies illuminates the ongoing interaction between society and its cultural products. No cultural object is ever created anew, she argues, but is instead constructed from existing cultural genres and conventions, the visions and professional needs of the artist, and the interests of an audience. Thus, every "new play" is in part a renaissance and every "revival" is in part an entirely new cultural object.

Acknowledgments 1. Timbers Cultural as Social Action The Cultural Object The Cultural Diamond Revivals 2. City Comedies Characteristics of City Comedy London Setting Socially Heterogeneous Characters Trickery Money Social Mobility Cynicism Ambiguous Morality City Comedy in Institutional Context The Theatres The Audience The Playwrights Three Dimensions of City Comedy Appeal City Comedy and Iron Age Londoners City Comedy and Tricksters City Comedy and Social Mobility 3. Revenge Tragedies Characteristics of Revenge Tragedy Court Setting Revenge Motivates Action Blood and Sex Trickery Ghosts Success, Death, Restoration Revenge Tragedy in Institutional Context Three Dimensions of Revenge Tragedy Appeal Revenge Tragedy and Political Protestantism Revenge Tragedy and Horror Revenge Tragedy and the State4. Renaissance Revivals from the Restoration through the Age of Garrick Restoration and Eighteenth-Century London Theatre Theatre of the Court Theatre of the Town Renaissance Revivals in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Three Renaissance Dramatists City Comedy Exceptionalism 5. Renaissance Revivals from Carlo the Hero Dog to the Elizabethan Stage Society Nineteenth-Century London Theatre The Decline of Fashion Doldroms and the End of the Monopoly The Return of Respectability Renaissance Revivals in the Nineteenth Century 6. Renaissance Revivals from the Edwardians to the Arts Council Twentieth-Century London Theatre Turn-of-the-Century Transition The World Wars and Between Postwar Theatre Renaissance Revivals in the Twentieth Century Revenge Tragedy Exceptionalism 7. Revivals and the Real Thing An Explanatory Model of Renaissance Revivals Revivals and the Theatre Manager Revivals and Audiences Representation and the Real Thing The Interaction of Metaphor Elegance Revivals and Social Meaning Appendix A: English Drama, 1571-1642: Total Plays, Lost Plays, and Genres Appendix B: City Comedy and Revenge Tragedy London Revivals Appendix C: Statistical Comparisons Twentieth-Century New Productions and Revivals Modern Renaissance Revivals before and after 1955 Appendix D: Modern Revivals of Other Renaissance Plays Notes Bibliography Index

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